Free Frozen: Heart of Dread, Book One by Melissa de la Cruz, Michael Johnston

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    “How’s that second fence coming along?” Wes asked.
    The boy turned back to his device, working furiously. The LTV was barreling through the rocky roads and the next barrier was coming up soon. They had to disable it or they would fry.
    “There’s some code on it I can’t figure out. It’s got to be one of the German ones—those are the hardest,” grumbled Farouk.
    “They must’ve changed it since the last time we did a run,” Shakes said.
    “German codes?” Nat asked with a frown.
    “The army recycles codes from the old wars. No one can make up new ones. They were lucky to find these,” said Wes.
    Nat knew it was the same story for everything. The generation that had come up with the heat suits and discovered cold fusion were long gone: survivors from Before, who remembered a different time, when the world was still green and blue, and who’d marshaled their resources and knowledge to figuring out how to survive the cold. But there were very few scientists these days, and the only books that remained were the physical ones that dated back to the early twenty-first century.
    “Can I try?” she asked Farouk.
    He handed her the device, a small black phone with a tiny keyboard. “It’s talking to an old Enigma machine, using radio signals. The fence is locked by a certain transmission, but I can’t figure it out. I need to send a message to the machine that’s holding the wall. But this is all it’s giving me,” he said, showing her the screen of numbers.
    She stared at the sequence, at the pattern it made, and typed out an answer. “Try it now,” she told Farouk.
    He studied her work, then hit the send key. “Here goes nothing,” he muttered.
    But a few minutes later, Shakes called excitedly from the driver’s seat. “Fence is down!” he whooped, checking the electromagnetic sensor.
    “How’d you do that?” Farouk asked.
    “I just saw it.” She shrugged. Numbers came easily to her. Patterns. She’d been able to break the code, and read its simple request. TO OPEN GATE SAY HELLO . She’d simply typed the word “hello” in the code and the fence had opened for her.
    “Good work,” Wes said. “You’re almost part of the team.” He smiled. “Hey!” he said, noticing that Daran and Zedric had opened the food packs. “You boys better share.”
    Zedric threw him a foil-wrapped object and Wes caught it deftly. “Mmm. Curry pizza burroti.” Wes grinned. “Want a bite?” he offered. “Best McRoti in Vegas. And looks like the boys picked up some McRamen, too.”
    “No, thanks.” Nat shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”
    “I’ll leave you a piece if you change your mind,” he said. He offered her his chopsticks. “Pull for luck,” he said.
    She took one side and the sticks broke off, leaving her with the bigger half.
    “You win.” He grinned. He was such a Vegas boy, superstitious about everything, including the chopsticks-wishbone game. He began to unwrap his food, whistling a melody that sounded familiar.
    “What is that?”
    “Dunno. My mom used to sing it,” he explained, and his face pinched a little.
    “Listen, I know you from somewhere—don’t I? I feel like we’ve met before,” she asked him suddenly. She was certain of it, she just couldn’t place him, but it would come to her soon enough. That tune he was whistling . . . if only she could remember, but her memory was gray like her lenses, cloudy; she could put together bits and pieces but not the whole thing, not her whole life.
    “Nah, I don’t gamble.” He smiled, taking a big bite of his burroti.
    “Only with his life,” Shakes said, from the front. “Hey! What about me?” he said, holding up his hand, and Farouk tossed him his own multi-cuisine mash-up.
    “I swear I’ve met you before, and I don’t just mean from the casino the other day,” she said to Wes. It was suddenly important that she remember why his face was so familiar to her. “But I guess not.”
    Wes regarded her